22 Responses to “Efficiency Rankings - Week 8”

If these rankings are right, then we would expect Denver to destroy the Saints on Sunday. I hope that's the case, as I will likely need to pick them in a survival pool. But somehow I'm afraid the game will really be closer than that with Drew Brees on offense.

You mentioned in your appearance on the podcast that you think the Saints will climb back up. how are you feeling about this matchup?

Wait. Something seems off with the numbers. How does Denver have the #1 ranked offense while the Saints are 21st? That doesn't seem to match yesterday's numbers where the Saints are #2 on offense and Denver is 10th...

-Baltimore plummeted in the rankings after getting spanked in Houston. Despite their defensive injuries, it was their O ranking that fell 6 spots. Luckily they likely only have to go .500 the rest of the way in order to make the playoffs.

-Carolina mercifully fell in the rankings after losing to Dallas. Carolina is one of the system's most controversial rankings at #12 despite starting the season 1-5.

-As I had to suffer through watching the niners during the aughts, I tend to search for moral victories in defeat. There were 2 losing teams that rose considerably up the rankings: Arizona and Seattle.

-Arizona DOMINATED the Vikings but lost. They particularly shut down MIN's passing game, and outgained the Vikings by 150 yards. Unfortunately they were undone by a Skelton pick-6.

-Seattle ran all over the niners despite the niners' deserved reputation as an elite run stopper. Interestingly, they also shut down the niners' rushing O according to SR (only Gore could consistently get through), but the niners' ypc looked nice due to some long ones.

Why are all the teams with the toughest schedules near the top? All 9 of the teams with an Opp GWP less than .49 are in the bottom half of the rankings. It seems to me that schedule strength should be mostly independent of team strength.

Anon, one reason the bottom teams have easier SOS could be that most of the bottom teams are in the AFC, and are more likely to play each other than they are the stronger teams in the NFC. The AFC is much weaker than the NFC this year.

At the first Anonymous: Tennis player A loses to Rafael Nadal 6-4. Player B beats my aunt Bertha 6-3. My Aunt Bertha is 50 years old and weighs in at a matronly 5'4" 175 lbs. Who do you think is a better tennis player, A or B? Do you think opponent strength should be a factor in the model now?

Is there an easy way to translate these efficiency rankings into win probabilities for every game left on the NFL schedule? We could add the projected wins and losses to the existing records and get a look at potential playoff seeding.

Arizona did not dominate Minnesota. Until garbage time, the VIKES' "D" had swarmed all over the Cards' offense, especially in the red zone. And on the other side of the ball: while Ponder had an off game, that should have made it all the easier for a "dominating" Cardinals defense to key on the run. Yet they allowed AP to get 6.7 yards per carry (if you want to arbitrarily throw out his longest run--27 yards--he still averaged a very healthy 5.7 yards per carry in his other 22 rushing attempts).

Finally, the Minnesota defense recorded seven sacks, while (again, even though Ponder struggled) the Cardinals only got three. If "domination" is going to get brought up, it's not on the side of the ledger you are saying.

As far as rushing success rate, I wonder how much bias there is from coaching. Presumably it's much easier to have a success on 3rd and 2 than on 1st and 10 even though YPC is probably lower on 3rd down. That means that a coach that runs more on 3rd and 2 and less on 1st and 10 than the average coach will boost his team's run success rate. That's not a problem, as a good coach should continue to be a good coach in the future.

However, that's not the case for defensive success rate as a team can't control when the other team runs, and the level of opponent coaching might not remain constant over the rest of the season. Then again, I suppose that would be somewhat mitigated by oppGWP. Just thinking out loud here.

At jditoro, next time before you condescend, maybe you should re-read my post. I never said that schedule strength shouldn't be a factor. Of course it should. I said that schedule strength should be independent of team strength, since team strength is already adjusted to account for schedule strength. If the schedule strength is weighted properly, there should be just as many teams with tough schedules at the bottom of the rankings as at the top.

However, Ian's explanation regarding the relative strengths of the AFC and NFC is probably the reason for the uneven distribution here.

The offense has scored over 21 points once this entire season. Otherwise, it's been 10 to 21 points per game every game.

Meanwhile, the defense has held opponents to 24 points or less every game except for the game against the Texans in week 1 (in which the offense turned over the ball 4 times). The defense limited opponents to under 15 points in 3 out of 6 games.

@BBurkeESPN

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